it's not always been about access to oil, a close relationship with israel, or the deployment of military forces for purposes of national security. the americans have been there for 150 years giving to the region in much more practical and beneficial ways for the people of the region, and not just for us. that's why i wrote the book. i wanted them to know that, and i wanted the american people to know that story. >> host: who was malcolm, and what what happened to him? >> guest: a professor of science at ucla who left the year before i arrived to work on my ph.d.. he grew up in beirut. his patients were on the faculty at aub, and though he made a very distinguished career for himself in the united states as a score lar of the middle east, he went home in the early 80s to lead the school during a period of particularly difficult times when beirut fractured due to the civil war and the israeli incursion of 1892, the city a mess, the school under assault, in a lot of personal danger, but he believed that going back and running the school and providing an example of leadership at a time of cr